Little Mews on the Prairie: Weekend Trapping

This past weekend was my wife's fall break, and with grandma in town to watch the kids, Katie and I decided to go camping with the intent of trying to trap a passage Peregrine in Oklahoma. We headed down to a wetland area in southwestern Oklahoma where we had heard of several sightings over the past couple of weeks and set up camp. The campsite had an interesting old barn on the edge of the property complete with its own Great Horned Owl who would have happily eaten my Hybrid right off his block if given half a chance.

After getting settled in we took a drive around to get feel for the area. There were mainly flooded fields around that held many shorebirds and waterfowl. The amount of ducks was unbelivable. There were so many that the bass from the beating of the birds wings after they were flushed made my bones vibrate.

We ended up having pretty warm weather during the day and it looked like the Peregrines that had been there the week before had moved on to Texas. We did, however, see many morphs of Red-tailed Hawks, Coopers Hawks, Kestrels, Harriers, Merlins, and Prairie Falcons, one of which we trapped. It was a really nice looking bird but upon further consideration I decided that I did not have the time to start another bird this year. It just so happened that a boyscout group was visiting this area at the time and after talking to them about falconry for a few minutes, I let them have a real close look at her before I turned her loose. Even without seeing any Peregrines and getting a flat tire the last morning we were there, we had a great time seeing another part of Oklahoma. You can bet I'll be back there next year, but maybe a couple of weeks earlier.